De­posits still high

HIGH de­posit fees are still pre­vent­ing many peo­ple from get­ting on the prop­erty lad­der, the study by the Halifax has found.

The study said that as a pro­por­tion of the pur­chase price, the typ­i­cal de­posit has soared from 10 per cent in 2007 to 20 per cent in 2011.

The av­er­age first-time buyer de­posit in the first 11 months of 2011 was £27,032 up from £17,482 in 2007.

First-time buy­ers in Greater Lon­don typ­i­cally put down the big­gest de­posits, av­er­ag­ing £60,192 and a quar­ter of the av­er­age prop­erty value.

Buy­ers in the north had the small­est de­posits - av­er­ag­ing £14,882 and 15 per cent of the value of their home.

Lenders have grad­u­ally been bring­ing back deals re­quir­ing lower de­posits, but there have been com­plaints that the terms of the mort­gages are too re­stric­tive, ac­cord­ing to the study.

The study also found that the vast ma­jor­ity of ar­eas with af­ford­able homes are out­side the South of Eng­land. No districts in Lon­don are deemed af­ford­able while all districts in the North East are.

Three quar­ters of ar­eas are af­ford­able in the North East, North West, York­shire and the Hum­ber, East Mid­lands, West Mid­lands, Scot­land, Wales and North­ern Ire­land.

This com­pares with just five per cent in the south, com­pris­ing Greater Lon­don, the South East, the South West and the East of Eng­land.

The study also looked at the con­se­quences of end­ing the cur­rent hol­i­day on stamp duty for first time buy­ers this spring. It pre­dicts that 38 per cent more first-time buy­ers, and 43 per cent in to­tal, will have to pay stamp duty once the govern­ment’s con­ces­sion ends in March next year.